Team Industries operates a fabrication shop in Wsconsin and sends pipe and pressure vessel products to customer job sites nationwide.

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Team Industries Inc.’s company name accurately describes its close-knit culture. The Wisconsin-based pipe and pressure vessel fabricator  was founded in 1987 by a small group of investors, led by ex-employees of a bankrupt mechanical contractor.

The company has undergone several growth spurts over the past 21 years and continues to be held by some of the original investors. Most of them are employees at Team, at various levels – including management and craftsmen – Vice President of Sales and Estimating Mike Mincks says.

“From the beginning, the company has been a close group of coworkers and open at the management level,” he says. “Even with craftsmen out in the shop, we have a very open relationship. Everyone truly feels like they are part of a team.”

As a team, the staff has built the company’s reputation for quality and on-time delivery.

Growing Operations
Mincks joined Team Industries 16 years ago and has seen several expansions since then. The company operates a fabrication shop in Wisconsin and sends fabrication to customer job sites nationwide. “This year, we expanded to a facility in Port Arthur, Texas,” he says.

“It’s on the Gulf Coast, which is rich with petroleum refineries and chemical companies,” Minicks adds. “There are a lot of petroleum refinery expansion projects in process and we’re involved in that to a large degree.”    

The company is also involved in the power industry and has completed projects for producers of fossil fuels and renewable energy. Its work is primarily domestic, although Team does fabricate for projects overseas occasionally, for U.S.-based customers.

“In northeast Wisconsin, where we’re located, we’ve expanded to additional sites – two in particular – where our union local is located,” Mincks says. “We want to draw from that same local [Plumbers & Steamfitters, Local 400].

“We know their training facility is top-notch, and we’ve chosen to expand operations around our home base for that reason.”

He says he expects to see continued growth for the company as the “relative boom time for petroleum refineries and power companies” continues. “We’ve chosen to expand conservatively, using appropriate facilities at selected locations, and well-trained union workers to help meet that demand.”

Well-Trained
Team Industries Inc.’s work force, too, has grown steadily. It currently employs 325 people across its four locations – three in Wisconsin and one in Port Arthur, Texas.

Mincks says the company relies on the local union’s training program and five-year apprenticeships to prepare its work force and its employees, in turn, help lead those programs. “The union training facility is state-of-the-art [and was] completed in 2005,” he says. “Their training facility is just a quarter-mile from our facility, and some of our journeymen help in the training program.”

Team Building
Team Industries’ work force includes many long-term employees, he adds, emphasizing again the company’s close-knit atmosphere.

“Every year, we have a retreat and we get away from the office for a weekend, pick a topic or tackle a current problem,” he says. “It’s a teambuilding effort that gets us out of the work atmosphere we’re in every day.”

Safety and Technology
He says the company also has an extensive safety program, which includes employee incentives, monthly safety meetings and monthly safety training. “We try to make these sessions current to what we’re actually doing,” he says. “They are relative to what’s going on in the shop.

The company’s priorities moving forward, he adds, will be to keep abreast of new and better ways of doing business and new equipment innovations, and to continue to remain on the “leading edge of technology” in its industry.